MEMORY FOAM

Well nearly a year since I lasted posted in Memory Foam – lots happened! But now is for NOW!

Just in the process of collating the work and trying to understand it, from last week’s piece on the Loughborough University Fruit Route with Anne-Marie Culhane.

The first part was a guided walk around the Fruit Route by Anne-Marie – big turn out!

Then ‘IN YOUR HANDS’ a performative installation.

We invited members of the public, students, staff to join us in the Fruit Route Orchard at Loughborough University for wild tea, scones, jam, clotted cream and tasseography – reading the tea leaves!

The IN YOUR HANDS installation saw a constant stream of people of all ages, nationalities, and gender sitting down with others to drink, share stories and see what they could in the tea leaves left in the bottom of their tea bowls.

The visitors were served and guided by the artists who encouraged them to slow down and consider ‘this moment and place now’ as they engaged with the artist led process of eating scones, drinking tea and the ritual of ‘reading the leaves’.

More here: http://burnthewater.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/in-yo…

Here we see Mika Obara read the nettle tea leaves left at the bottom of her In Your Hands tea bowl.

Later today they will bury an old friend of mine. Their burrying has caused all kinds of memories and feelings around him to resurface and I am at once young and yet older at he same time.

daybreak
yesterday’s dreams shift
sparrow to sparrow

Still mulling over Barefoot Blindfold and finding that the birds and birdsong seem to now pop up in all I’m doing – from working on a possible new piece of work with Gavin Wade to weeding the back border.

Good to also find out that other participants in Barefoot Blindfold are building the experience into new works. Final year fine art student at Loughborough University, Katie Murray, contacted me to say that she’s been making some bigger drawings / works using some of the techniques that she tried out during Barefoot Blindfold.

Her ‘blind’ drawings of burdsong during Barefoot Blindfold very much remind me of sonograms of birdsong. Well in a way they are – from bird through the air into her ear onto her brain down to her fingertips into the pencil crayon and on to the paper.

I’ve uploaded one of them to here – the originals will go up in the Landscaping Our Society shed (I refuse to call it the Landscaping and Gardening Society shed as it is now known) on Loughborough University campus.

You can catch Katie’s degree show at Loughborough University:

http://lborofineart.co.uk/2012/kmurray.html

The blind man’s guide,
Meek and neglected thing, of no renown!
Soon will peep forth the primrose, ere it fades
Friends shall I have at dawn, blackbird and thrush
To rouse me, and a hundred warblers more!

from ‘The Recluse’ by William Wordsworth

http://littleonion.posterous.com/choreographed-by-…

Choreographed by Birdsong – from Barefoot Blindfold – Paul Conneally & Anne-Marie Culhane May 2012

After the first half-hour of sitting back to fruit tree blindfold barefoot arms hands and upper body choreographed by birdsong we remained in silence but now not blindfold each participant was invited to record some of how they felt, heard saw in and around the orchard area of Anne-Marie’s Loughborough University Fruit Route that we were in.

All took different approaches I returned to the technique I developed during my Spoil Heap Harvest piece for Transform Snibston. Making what I call ‘presaged images’. Taking mnaterials, plants, soil etc from the environment and pressing them into – onto paper.

I made two presages and I’ve one of them here. It is made by pressing plant materials picked from the orchard margin into the paper – bluebell flower nettle leaf buttercup. The other image I made is the imprint of grass etc from the bottom of my bare left foot.